


Determination

by Lizzy_Raven



Series: Determination [1]
Category: Naruto, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, BAMF Lee, Determination, Gen, Immortality, Lee can't die, Lee can't mold chakra, but he can do something else, hard work and elbow grease, it's not necessary to know undertale, no undertale characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 18:51:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8068750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizzy_Raven/pseuds/Lizzy_Raven
Summary: When he dies for the second time and gets back up again, nin start talking. By the time he’s done it a third time, his Bingo Book entry lists Rock Lee as immortal.





	

**Author's Note:**

> No prior knowledge of the Undertale universe is necessary. Here are the basics that will help you understand this story better though; it is a role playing game where the explanation for respawn abilities is that the main playable character has high ‘Determination’, which allows them to return to a save point after they’ve died. Unlike a regular video game, these respawns have an effect on the gameplay. I’ve tweaked the idea a little bit, but the main concept is still there.

In Konoha, it was not exactly unusual to hear that a ninja previously thought to be dead was in fact walking around and talking. Between Orochimaru and Pein, the idea was no longer novel. It wasn’t expected that the dead would return of course, but when rumors arose in the village that someone had come back to life, no one passed around the word ‘immortal’. So when Rock Lee stood up, still fighting, after his heart stopped for the first time, it wasn’t spread much further than his close friends and colleagues.

The rationalization was that he didn’t actually die- Lee had fainted from blood loss, or had briefly been knocked unconscious. He never stayed down for very long, so he couldn’t be dead. Orochimaru’s Edo Tensei required sacrifices, seals, and preparation. Pein’s mysterious raising of the dead was not widely understood, but everyone agreed that whole platoons rose together, the warriors of Konoha rising as one.

Lee’s teammates, though understandably concerned, were not too disturbed. After all, any methods of living after death undoubtedly required molding chakra; the one skill Lee was notorious for having no ability in. So when Lee died for the first time, his teammates worried, spilled blood, and prayed to their dark god, but they didn’t even suspect the truth.

Lee didn’t even understand, at least not at first. No, the first hint was a whisper of a thought in the back of Hyuga Neji’s brain. The tiniest bit of confusion, the awareness that something was wrong. But it was immediately washed away by a heady relief, not that he would ever show so much emotion to others, or even admit it to himself.

It happens like this:

Team Gai fights a group of missing nin, mostly former Kumo ninjas. Gai and Neji both handle two opponents, and are too occupied to realize that Lee is in over his head until it’s too late. Tenten, distracted by a fierce doton user, is all but removed from the other fights, her line of sight severely hindered by the battlefield of her enemy’s attacks.

Lee’s adversary, a hulking enemy with two deadly tantos, swings wildly, the cut from his sword extending past the metal. A sharp, crackling edge slashes through an orange leg-warmer, leaving it sizzling gently, and the slight scent of burning fabric in its wake.

Lee’s nose twitches, and he vows to not let the lightning-edged tantos touch him again. The chakra paper Gai-sensei had once given him had only shuddered pathetically in Lee’s hand, but he had paid attention to the Academy lectures as a child, desperate to acquire ninja skills as though through osmosis, and knew of elemental chakra as well as his teammates.

So Lee, weights abandoned without fanfare, legs and arms pumping, overwhelmed the missing nin. In a move reminiscent of his younger days, Lee runs in tight, quick loops around his opponent, encircling him. The raiton user slashes out with both tantos, but is unable to keep up with Lee’s insane speed, and is soon wrapped in bandages, arms and swords pinned by his sides.

Lee traps the man in a lotus, and for a minute it seems like he has won, almost easily. But then the attack that begins Lee’s legacy happens, and it’s not even done by Lee himself.

Not nearly as devastating as Kakashi’s signature move, but still effective, the ex-Kumo nin’s fingers twitch with electricity, and a shock wave runs over his body and into Lee’s.

The assassination raiton dances across Lee’s skin, but the real damage is inside. His heart stutters, and both men fall out of the lotus.

Lee falls, face down in the grass, hands still, body crumpled. His heart is not beating. The former Kumo nin, who had landed somewhat gracefully, shakes off the Lee’s bandages and turns to the other fights, square teeth bared in a dirty grin.

Neji, pulling out of a kaiten spin, is in shock, his byakugan watching desperately at the disappearance of Lee’s meager chakra. Gai, in a righteous fury, delivers a final blow to his second opponent, and rushes forward. Tenten, out of sight, can only hear as Lee’s breath hitches, and stops completely.

The missing nin turns his back towards the corpse, getting ready to attack its slightly larger clone.

It happens like this:

The body on the ground rises, like it once had in Lee’s first Chunin Exams. The eyes are half closed, the mouth slightly open, the face covered in dirt. A hand slowly raises, beckoning the missing nin to the fight which he thought he had already won.

The man, who had whipped back around at the slight sound behind him, stares in fascination, a tiny thrill of fear running through his bloodstream, already jam-packed with adrenaline.

He wonders, just for a second, what it’s like to fight someone who cannot die.

But he doesn’t wonder for very long, because very soon there’s something sticking through his chest, and maybe if he had enough time to scream he would have because that’s a fist in front of his face, that’s a human arm sticking through his body, _those are fingers, flexing, covered in blood and heartstrings-_

And the man wonders no more.

Neji watches, refusing to look away at the gory sight, taking a sick pleasure in seeing the missing nin’s chakra flicker and fade away like he had thought Lee’s had.

But it couldn’t have, because Lee was most definitely alive, still standing, still dragging in rough breaths, as Gai-sensei finishes off the rest of the missing nin, who are already weakened from Neji and Tenten’s attacks.

Tenten rushes forward, her own opponent forgotten, to stand by Lee, hands trembling slightly, not sure whether or not to reach out and touch, afraid to jostle the seemingly miraculous energy which supported her energetic teammate.

And Tenten had never before been jealous of her fellow kunoichi, always more confident in her blades than their obsessions and hopeless dreams. But just for a moment she wonders if Sakura or Ino could have done more for Lee, with their medical knowledge and green chakra. Just for a moment wonders, and wishes.

But then Lee is falling again, his limbs collapsing, his eyes closing, his breath huffing out. And Gai-sensei pushes Tenten out of the way, reaching out to cradle Rock Lee.

And if the sight of it, her sensei and his all-but-son embracing, one unconscious, the other sobbing, moves her in ways their tearful embraces never had managed to before, if Neji’s knees, which had never failed him, are weak and trembling, if Gai’s traitorous mind is whispering ‘ _please, please, anyone but him_ ’ well-

No one has to know.

* * *

The medics don’t say anything odd, and no one else _saw_ anything, so Neji tries to convince himself that he had misunderstood, that his eyes were wrong, that in the moment, he just wasn’t thinking clearly enough.

However, these things were false, and underneath all his excuses, Neji knew this. He had never had reason to doubt his vision before. He was not a man who let emotions take control, even in light of tragedy. But the alternative- that Lee did die, and came back- is just too outlandish, too outrageous, too impossible, that Neji accepts the only available explanation, and moves on.

It ticks in the back of his mind, and years later, it returns, uncalled, to the forefront. Neji will wonder, clinically detached, whether or not Lee is human, if that is the reason he keeps getting back up. But Neji won’t be able to bring himself to care, to feel anything but relief at the thought that there is at least one man whom he can count on to never leave.

* * *

But while the first time Lee dies, he is only surrounded by his team, the second time is much more public. There are other Konoha ninjas who watch with mostly awe, but also a little bit of fear, foreign nin who run home to tell their Kages, and even the few civilians who somehow manage to hear whispers of a ninja who refuses to die.

All the while, Lee grows stronger, still unaware that what he does, what he can do, is extraordinary. In his mind, he still has to train for three times as long as anyone else, is still a genius of hard work. Lee’s way is to refuse to give up, and he lives it, breathes it, feels his lungs choke with the feeling of it. He wakes up at three in the morning from nightmares to do pushups on his thumbs, protecting himself and his village in the only way he knows how: with his own two hands, calluses built on calluses, knuckles red with the blood of anyone who dares hurt what he holds precious.

But the people around Lee inside Konoha begin to change, begin to wonder about the man they once wrote off as a hopeless case, a foolish child, someone who could never become a ninja, who would never be anything more than a strong civilian, who would never be able to protect the village. They look at him and wonder. They see him, and they think about chakra.

But Lee only knew how to release chakra, never control it, and this, this was something different.

Outside Konoha, the rumors spread much quicker, unhindered by Lee’s previous reputation. They speak of him in lightly hushed voices; of a man so strong with his hands he doesn’t need chakra to kill. They speak of a man who can move faster than the Yellow Flash, and is twice as distinctive looking. They speak of a man whose dead body rises up from the battlefield and continues to kill. They call him immortal, and maybe they’re wrong, but maybe they’re right.

Someone thinks to put him in the bingo book, and while it doesn’t change everything, it changes enough. Suddenly, the name Rock Lee _means_ something, carries a weight it never had before, a reputation that precedes the man who never gives up.

Inside Konoha, Rock Lee returns to his tiny apartment, and ignores the soft squeak to the door. He ignores the constant sound of running water from three floors up, and the slight scent of burnt tomatoes from two apartments down. The building is lonely, dark and cramped, but Lee walks past his second hand furniture, opens the door on the far side of his apartment, takes a deep breath, and begins doing pull ups, hands grasping the metal bars of his tiny balcony.

Outside the village, whispers grow, and they start calling him The Beast of Konoha, and for once there’s fear in the voices of people who speak the nickname. They sit in darkened bars and drink, thinking about a man who comes from the ‘nicest’ village, but still got labeled with such a title. They think about his wide grin, his dark scowl. And maybe ‘beast’ doesn’t hold the same weight ‘demon’ does, but it still means something.

It gets scrawled underneath his glinting teeth in the bingo book, and people take note, always thinking, always planning. The more ambitious ninja see Lee’s entry, and wonder how to kill the un-killable man. They train, they fight, they dream. And Lee’s enemies grow, in those foreign dirty pubs, his reputation on the rise, the price on his neck inching upwards.

And still Lee grows stronger.

The comparisons, when they come, are hardly unexpected. Though Lee had never fought Hidan, he knows of the former Akatsuki member via his fellow Konoha nin. He doesn’t enjoy being compared to the bloodthirsty missing nin, who had only been defeated a Nara’s brain, and who had, according to Shikamaru, eventually starved to death, decapitated and buried alive. He doesn’t want people to try and starve him.

The comparison to Gaara is no less unexpected, though it is less accurate in its theory. The contrast becomes much more popular though, both because of Gaara’s prominence, and because of their somehow well-known fight many years ago in the Chunin Exams.

The situations are less similar, but Lee thinks he likes this comparison better.

Lee was there, when Gaara came back to life. He knows what happened, knows that their situation are widely different. He wonders what Gaara thinks of a man who can come back from the dead without a sacrifice.

He doesn’t ask.

* * *

It keeps happening. The blame falls solely on word getting out about Lee’s mysterious power. He would never be careless, even though the power seems consistent. Lee refuses to take the strange ability as a guarantee, and only trains harder. As his notoriety rises, more and more nin try to test their strength against him. The Hokage offers him ANBU, and Lee thinks about it in one uncertain moment, before brushing away the dark thought.

Lee’s power lies in his ability to die, not to kill.

So while his former classmates begin to disappear under masks, Lee’s face tans lightly but evenly, and his picture in the bingo books swaps out for one more matured. His smile does not falter, his mind is not consumed with darkness.

Lee’s reputation manages to do what his beloved Gai-sensei was always unable to achieve, and when Lee takes on his first genin team, he teaches them all to be geniuses of hard work, teaches them to take nothing for granted, to not expect anything to be handed to them. Ninjas and civilians alike, if they wake up early enough, are treated to the now-familiar sight of five figures, running along the village walls on their hands.

All three little rookies follow Lee around, wide eyes shining at his brute strength, not-so-secretly whispering in awe about their sensei, _their sensei_ who, without using an drop of chakra, could powder rocks with his fists, who could fell walls with a knock, who could wake up alive after his heart stopped beating, who could still fight, who could still defend-

Lee never got used to the rumors, the sideways looks, but this quiet admiration was far superior to the fearful glances or arrogant sneers he was used to from most ninjas he didn’t know, so he allowed it with a soft grin, and silently vowed to protect these children the way he had so unwaveringly protected everything else he held dear.

With both hands.


End file.
